The Legal Limit

by Martin Clark

  “Pick one, please,” Allison said to her while Mason was jerking on his safety belt and clicking it secure.

  The child studied the bag’s contents, reached in and removed the M&M’s. “These,” she said.

  “Hand them to me,” Allison calmly directed her.

  Grace complied, and Allison poured out a handful of colored chocolate and returned it to the girl, then took the rest of the treats, rolled down the window, and tossed them onto the ground, still in the bag.

  Grace didn’t bat an eye, didn’t protest, and she started in on the candy, content and mute. Before accelerating onto the highway, Mason checked his daughter, swiveling so he could see her. She held a single red M&M pinched between her thumb and first finger and bit into it with her front teeth, peering at her father, church-mouse silent, too canny even at age four to utter a word.

  “So you’re not going to tell me what it is?” he asked again as they drove off, but Allison completely ignored him.

  A conscientious wife, she apologized two days later, made him a nice meal and wore her pricey perfume, promising him her bad patch was nothing more than stress from the decision and certainly had nothing to do with him. “I can’t wait for us to get there,” she said. “I’m ready.”

  Chapter Six

  “We was wonderin’ if you could help pay for your daddy’s funeral,” asked the woman whose voice Mason heard for the first time ever when she said hello. Johnette was her name, and she requested the money before she told him Curt was dead, a cart-before-the-horse rush that left Mason—blinking, jolted—to inquire if his father was in fact deceased.

  “’Course he’s dead. Why else would we be wantin’ you to help bury him?” The response was a cocktail of bitchiness, impatience and entitlement. She was calling from Marion, South Carolina.

  “I haven’t seen him in years,” Mason said. He was in his Richmond office, the James River viewable if he maneuvered his chair close to the window and strained his neck. “Why’re you calling me?” Flabbergasted, he heard his voice change registers. “So he’s gone, huh?” he said before Johnette was able to respond.

  “You still his son, ain’t you?” she answered.

  “And who, exactly, are you?” he demanded. “How do you know Curt?”

  “I’m his wife.”

  “His wife?” This wasn’t the woman with whom he’d hightailed it out of Stuart. “You were married to Curt?”

  “Common law,” she said dourly. “We was common-law husband and wife.”

  “Ah, I see. So you and Curt shacked up for a while.”

  “We was together for nearly three years, thank you.”

  “Well, last time I checked, there’s no such thing as common-law marriage in this part of the world.”

  “Call it what you want, he was my husband. So are you goin’ to pitch in?”

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Common-Law Curt Hunt. Put me down for a thousand, and we’ll just knock it off the six-figure unpaid child support tab he ran up with my mother. How’s that?”

  “It’s a damn sorry son who wouldn’t want to see his own daddy properly laid to rest.”

  “It’s a damn sorry daddy who’d walk out on his family and abandon them. And that’s not the worst of it.”

  “Well, he left you somethin’, but you can bet you ain’t goin’ to be gettin’ it with that kinda bad attitude.”

  Mason snorted into the receiver. “There’s nothing he could leave me I’d be interested in.” He snapped back his desk chair so he was looking at the ceiling. “Thank you for calling. Lots of luck finding anyone who’d pay for Curt’s funeral. Good-bye.” He gave the phone a rude toss onto the carpet, where it lay bleeding long-distance rants and threats and profanity until Johnette ran out of steam and ended the call.

  He allowed what he’d heard to steep and spread until it had his whole mind. He remained reclined in his seat waiting to see how it would strike him, sitting there as if he’d chugged some mysterious potion and was tensely awaiting the results, but nothing came, nothing moved or stirred or broke or changed, nothing big or small, not so much as a nibble of melancholy because he’d lost his father for good. Allison was at their town house packing for the move to Stuart, and he called her with the news, and she was soft and comforting on the phone, her words cushioned. She offered to drive to his office; he told her there was no need.

  After a few minutes, he stood and gazed through the window at the city’s ragged backside—bridges, warehouses and construction cranes—and he became angrier and angrier precisely because he felt so little. His dad had passed away, and instead of a grief born of bottomless love and a blood bond, nothing was registering, and that missing hurt was the final of Curt Hunt’s thefts, the capstone of his selfish, ill-tempered life. Mason laid his head on the cold, air-conditioned glass, then let his weight follow and closed his eyes, twenty-one stories high, pitched forward.

  Gates phoned collect while Mason was still at the window. Mason never refused his calls, which came at least three times per week on a direct line, and he sent cash to keep his brother’s canteen account solvent, listened to his carping and plans and schemes when prison was grinding on him, rounded up a firm secretary to type the wacky jailbird pleadings Gates sent along for comment and correction and did whatever else he could to make Gates’s meager confines tolerable.

  “You hear the news?” Gates asked after the operator had finished with her questions and Mason had accepted the charges.

  “Yeah, just now.”

  “So the devil is dead,” Gates said, the sentence almost singsong.

  “So I’m told. How’d you find out?”

  “A lady from South Carolina called and left a message with the warden.”

  “I forgot to ask what killed him.” Mason could hear the prison hubbub on his brother’s end, jeers and shrill hostility, the occasional echo of metal against metal.

  “I’d like to think the Good Lord hunted his ass down and hung him up by his heels and beat the holy shit out of him.”

  “I doubt the Lord has that much time to devote to individual cases.”

  “So we’re attendin’ the funeral, right?” Gates asked. “You’re going to spring me for a day?”

  “Hell no. I’m not about to go to his funeral. Have you lost your mind?”

  “Listen, Mason, no one hates Curt more than me, but it’s my one chance to get free of this shithole, okay? If you pay for an off-duty cop, they’ll let me out for the service. I consider it a mini-vacation. Hell, it’ll be about the only thing our sorry dad has ever done for me. If you don’t want to make the drive, hey, cool, that’s fine, but please loan me the cash so I can spend a few hours in civilization, maybe eat a Big Mac and some fries and smell air that doesn’t stink.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements. Sure.”

  “Thanks, Mason. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” A man in the background screamed at another inmate, cursing furiously.

  “I suppose I should call Mom,” Mason said, dreading the chore. “Let her know.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “I’ll have my secretary contact the prison.” Mason paused. “When’s the funeral? I didn’t even think to ask.”

  “Day after tomorrow. Hell, Mason, just come and visit me. You don’t have to sit through the service or take part in anything. After everybody’s cleared out, maybe you and me will have the pleasure of pissin’ on old Curt’s loose dirt.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Almost on impulse, Mason left for South Carolina the morning of the funeral, unable to rest, setting out at four thirty, dark and muggy, a Styrofoam cup of black convenience-store coffee his companion, the radio neglected, a map in the passenger’s seat, the headlights forlorn on the interstate, eating into the distance. He’d left Allison a note: “Gone to the funeral. See you tonight.” He was grateful when the sun brightened the sky and more cars joined him on the highway, felt better in traffic and color.

  He located the funeral home and was greeted by a
professionally solemn young man with a gold bracelet and a droopy boutonniere. Mason was early, and the lad sympathized with him about his “loss,” then ushered him into a small chapel for some private time with his father, stepping dramatically backward through the double doors and pulling them closed as he withdrew, bowing slightly all through his departure. Mason caught the scent of funeral flowers, and the full-throttle air-conditioning braced him, shocked his skin. Curt’s casket was in the front of the room, a gaudy floral heart atop spindly metal legs posted beside the body. A sash with gold glitter words bisected the arrangement, but Mason couldn’t make out the letters from a distance.

  He walked to the casket, aware of how many steps he took, counting them in his head as he went. He heard the air blowing from vents, tasted a sour current in his spit, noticed the sway in the floor when he stopped a few paces short of his dead father. GONE TO GOD, that’s what was written on the sash. He didn’t hesitate or reflect or ready himself before looking down at Curt. The mortician’s best art couldn’t conceal how diminished the body was, wizened and faint, as if a considerable portion of him had left the earth ahead of the remainder. It struck Mason that he was staring at painted-up dregs, sediment in an ugly blue suit, dross prettified by rouge, powder and a belly full of sawdust. He was relieved in a certain sense that the remains were so different from the dreadful man he remembered, so diluted they were unable to summon Curt in any meaningful way.

  He stood there for several minutes, taking a long look at his father, finally touching one of his entwined hands—clay cold—before turning away, recalling how powerful they had seemed to him as a boy. He took a seat on the first pew, bowing his head and dabbing at his eyes with his sleeve, emotional because of what he’d never had, crying-mad because of such a fundamental disappointment, gypped and betrayed by his own damn daddy.

  Johnette arrived with her three sisters and two grown sons, wearing sunglasses and solicitously attended by this flock of relatives, woozy and weak-kneed until she learned Mason was present. She recovered from her grief and regained her strength long enough to dicker with him about payment for the funeral, smoking a cig and exhaling from one side of her mouth, wagging a finger at Mason and leaning forward in her chair when she spoke. She tapped the ashes on the floor of the business office, where they were meeting by themselves.

  “You don’t jest get to come here and enjoy all this for free,” she informed him. “No more than you’d expect to walk into Dollywood or the demolition derby or whatever without payin’ for a ticket. Especially since you’re his son and rich as Midas.” She was in her fifties, fleshy, with an abundance of dyed-black hair and a round, attractive, gentle face that gave no warning of the harridan underneath.

  “So how much is my ticket to the Curt Hunt farewell tour?”

  “I don’t see why you shouldn’t pay it all, especially bein’ such a smart-ass. The whole six thousand and change.” She expelled a stream of smoke. “And you better believe you ain’t gettin’ the stuff he left you with your present attitude.”

  Rank curiosity got the better of him, and they negotiated a payment of five hundred dollars to Johnette Flippin for “reimbursement,” and she sent one of her sons to fetch Mason’s legacy. The boy returned twenty minutes later with two large toolboxes and a letter, belligerently announcing to Mason he’d taken the socket set for himself, because that’s what Curt would’ve wanted. “I’m sure,” Mason said sarcastically. He put the letter in his suit pocket, saving it for a less hectic setting.

  There were maybe twenty-five people at the service, and Gates arrived immediately before it got under way. “Hope they hired a Primitive Baptist,” he said, laughing, as he and Mason and an off-duty cop sat outside in the swampy South Carolina air, flying, humming pests occasionally lighting on their necks or hovering around their ears, their zzzzzz sounds like tiny drills. “The longer the better.” Gates was sausage-wrapped in a suffocating black suit, a wool monstrosity that had him sweating all over himself, even with the coat removed. It was the suit he’d been wearing the day of his conviction in Patrick County. He’d gained fifteen or so pounds, and his skin was eerily white, as if he’d been bleached, colorless except for dark, concave sinkholes beneath his eyes. Yet he seemed fairly chipper, fairly upbeat.

  “You not going in?” Gates’s keeper asked.

  “Hell no.” He laughed. “I’m plannin’ to sit right here and visit with my brother.” He was in leg irons, but his hands were free. “Enjoy bein’ outside and the fresh air.”

  “Nothing to me, one way or the other,” the man said, then introduced himself to Mason. He moved to another bench to allow the brothers some privacy, and a funeral home employee brought them all cold sodas.

  “You recognize anyone here?” Gates asked. “Who the fuck would come to Curt’s funeral?”

  “I’m pretty sure I saw a representative from the Joan Crawford Foundation,” Mason cracked. “Then there was the ambassador from Dante’s innermost circle. The guy with the fur hat was Rasputin, I think.” He sipped his drink. “Seriously, I ran into our cousin, the redheaded kid who used to come by with Curt’s sister. He works for the railroad. Seems nice enough. Mostly it appears to be the high-white-trash clan of his last squeeze, this Johnette bitch.”

  Gates lowered his head and aimed for Mason’s ear. “So you’re headed back to Stuart,” he said confidentially. “It’s a done deal.”

  “Yeah. Pretty strange, huh?”

  “Strange, maybe, but good for me, I’m hopin’.”

  “In what way?” Mason tensed, set his drink on the bench but didn’t release it.

  “Shit, Mason, you’ll be the man, the commonwealth’s attorney.” His face grew animated, his voice quieter. “I didn’t want to mention anything on the phone, but for damn sure you can pull some strings for me now. Get me out on probation or find a loophole or have ’em lose my file. We both realize how this shit works. You can help me, get me out from under this. You know I got a raw deal anyway. You’d just be putting things right.”

  Mason frowned. Shook his head. “I couldn’t do anything if I wanted to, okay? Are we clear on that? More important, you need to understand that while I will continue to help you in any legal way possible, there is no frigging chance I’d even think about doing something that would leave me or my family at risk.” He locked on to his brother, eye to eye. “Don’t ever ask me again. You hear? Forget it.”

  Gates ducked his head. “Hey, cool. I know what’s what. I understand. Just keep me in mind. If the chance ever comes up, I know you’ll go to bat for me.”

  “I’ll do my job, pure and simple.”

  “Man, I’m proud of you,” Gates said, changing his tack. “No matter what happens.”

  “Yeah.”

  He thought about sharing his father’s letter with Gates, but decided against it, unsettled as he was by his brother’s desperation and convict’s wheedling. They made small talk until the funeral concluded, the deepest notes of an organ’s closing hymn vibrating outside to where they sat. Mason had no interest in attending the graveside service, so he wished Gates well and slipped the cop two twenties and told him to make sure they enjoyed a good meal on their return, steaks if possible. Before leaving, he phoned his office in Richmond and instructed his secretary to contact the bank and stop payment on Johnette Flippin’s check.

  He opened the letter sitting in his car, the engine cranked, the air on high, battling the trapped South Carolina heat in the interior. The letter was in his father’s hand, the script unlearned and shaky:

  To Mason,

  So I hope you are find. Me I’m not to good. They tell me I have some Cancer. I am in the hospitel. I wanted you to have all my tool’s when I am gone. Johnette will give them you. I’m sorry I haven’t been there allways. I don’t no why you an your brother and Sadie had it in for me. Why you hated me and done me like you did but I wonted you to have my tools cause there’s no bad feelings from me. I for give you. An your mom and Gates to. I hope you for give me. Ta
ke care, your dad.

  love, Curt S. Hunt

  Mason read the note three times, and when he finished, he was left with a weak, sad grin. “Perfect,” he said out loud. “What else did you expect?”

  Chapter Seven

  “It’s not like I have a periodic table of the elements nailed to my wall.”

  Those were the first words Mason ever heard from Custis Norman in person. Mason had gently rapped on Custis’s office door and poked his head—cautiously, politely—through a small crack without violating the threshold. Custis was at his topsy-turvy desk, facing away from the door, his feet plopped on a credenza, a phone receiver jammed between his cheek and formidable shoulder, a newspaper folded down into a fourth of its size held aloft, the crossword puzzle visible from where Mason stood, peeking into the room.

  “‘Symbol for tin,’ and it’s not t-i or t-n. What kind of feebleminded vice president are you, anyway? Shouldn’t you know this, being’s how you guys make metal?” He twisted toward Mason, then slid his wing tips off the furniture one at a time. “Gotta fly,” he said, hanging up the phone.

  Custis was impossible to miss in small-town Stuart, and during visits home from college and law school, Mason had seen him on occasion, collecting his mail from the post office or inflating his tires at the old Gulf station, but they’d never crossed paths close enough to actually meet. Robust, imposing, hefty, bigger than Mason in every respect, over six and a half feet tall, Custis was a force of nature with quick brown eyes, blunt features and black, black skin. A thicket of dreadlocks, carefully barbered and groomed, corkscrewed out of his leonine head. “My brother in Memphis,” he explained, glancing at the phone. “You must be Mason Hunt.” He came around the desk, covering the distance in two nimble strides. He wore a wrinkled seersucker coat above khaki pants, and the idiot faces of Larry, Curly and Mo spilled down his tie. “Welcome.”